"Dr. Stidger is a college student who played with the foot-ball in America. He is a man with the bigness of the head! He reaches the six feet tall; the four feet around; has an arm like an ox and a head like a board!"
"Dr. Stidger is a college student who played with the foot-ball in America. He is a man with the bigness of the head! He reaches the six feet tall; the four feet around; has an arm like an ox and a head like a board!"
I was not certain as to just what he meant by many of those references, but I was assured that they were intended to be highly complimentary to me. I am not yet sure of that but I had a good laugh just the same.
The story is told of a ruthless American humorist Hotel-keeper in Singapore who was entertaining a group of Japanese Officers from the Japanese Navy. This American had no love for Japan. He also knew of their lack of humor; so when the Japanese Captain arrived at the hotel the American Manager made quite an extended speech of welcome, as his American friends listened, greatly amused.
He said in part: "The hotel is yours! During your stay the entire force of servants is at your disposal. If there is anything that you want that you do not see, please ask for it."
Bromo volcanoOLD BROMO VOLCANO, JAVA."The way it effervesces Bromo is a fitting name," said the author when he saw it in action.
OLD BROMO VOLCANO, JAVA."The way it effervesces Bromo is a fitting name," said the author when he saw it in action.
OLD BROMO VOLCANO, JAVA.
"The way it effervesces Bromo is a fitting name," said the author when he saw it in action.
View of BoroboedoerA SIDE VIEW OF BEAUTIFUL BOROBOEDOER IN JAVA.Said by travelers to make the Pyramids look like child's play as a tremendous piece of construction; and as a work of art to have no rival in the whole world.
A SIDE VIEW OF BEAUTIFUL BOROBOEDOER IN JAVA.Said by travelers to make the Pyramids look like child's play as a tremendous piece of construction; and as a work of art to have no rival in the whole world.
A SIDE VIEW OF BEAUTIFUL BOROBOEDOER IN JAVA.
Said by travelers to make the Pyramids look like child's play as a tremendous piece of construction; and as a work of art to have no rival in the whole world.
A group of childrenNAKED AND OTHERWISE.This curious conglomeration of Mongrel children watching the photographer in Borneo where Dyaks, Chinese, Malay and others mix indiscriminately.
NAKED AND OTHERWISE.This curious conglomeration of Mongrel children watching the photographer in Borneo where Dyaks, Chinese, Malay and others mix indiscriminately.
NAKED AND OTHERWISE.
This curious conglomeration of Mongrel children watching the photographer in Borneo where Dyaks, Chinese, Malay and others mix indiscriminately.
A group of dogsA DOG MARKET AMONG THE IGGOROTEES OF THE PHILIPPINES.
A DOG MARKET AMONG THE IGGOROTEES OF THE PHILIPPINES.
A DOG MARKET AMONG THE IGGOROTEES OF THE PHILIPPINES.
The Japanese Captain bowed continuously and smiled; sucking in his breath with a characteristic national custom; the same sound they made as they eat fried eggs in a Japanese dining car; a sound similar to the old-fashioned but nowobsolete method of drinking coffee from a saucer.
"There is just one request however that we will have to make of you, while you are here with us in the hotel," continued the American hotel manager.
"And what is that may I ask?" inquired the Japanese Captain, still bowing and sucking in air through his teeth.
"That you do not climb around in the trees!"
The Japanese officers did not see the joke and did not even smile but the Americans in the Far East have laughed over it for years.
Which reminds one of the night on the Sambas River when a hundred little monkeys were silhouetted against a crimson sunset.
Red, brown, yellow, golden, blue orchids flashed in the sunlight; and flowers of every hue under God's blue skies made brilliant the river banks. At times the ship went so close that I could reach out and grab a limb of a tree, much to the indignation of the monkeys who chattered at me as if I had stolen something. Now and then a big lazy alligator slid into the water from the muddy banks as the wave-wash from our propeller frightened him.
Coming back down the Sambas River, along its winding, beautiful way we sat one evening and watched a crimson sunset from the deck of theship. At one point in the river there was a row of dead, bare trees. There were no leaves on the branches—only monkeys: big red monkeys, which they call "Beroks," and little gray fellows, which they call "Wahwahs." These monkeys were strikingly silhouetted against the crimson sunset in strange tropical fashion. From the tips of those dead trees down to the lowest branches dozens of monkeys stood like sentinels, or romped like children, or chattered like magpies. Their long curling tails silhouetted below the branches against the light of evening.
* * * * * *
Most Americans who go in and out of Japan get disgusted with the regulations that policemen impose upon them.
This is especially true of those Americans living in China who are compelled, for business reasons, to go in and out of Japan, for at every trip they are required to answer the same list of questions. I traveled from Korea into Japan with the Military Attaché of the Spanish Legation. When we landed a Japanese officer who had known him for many years insisted upon his answering the usual questions.
"I've been in this country for ten years and yet I never go out or in that they do not compel me to go through the same foolish police regulationswhich they have copied from Germany and haven't sense enough to give up!" he said indignantly.
I also traveled with a party in which there was a Methodist Bishop's wife. This Bishop's wife absolutely refused to give the Japanese policeman her age. Not that she had any reason to be ashamed of her age. In fact she could easily have passed for twenty years younger than she probably was, but she just had the average American woman's spunk and refused to give it.
For a few minutes it looked as if diplomatic relations between Japan and America might be seriously cracked, if not broken; for the Japanese officer had no sense of humor. That is one of the chief defects of the Japanese police and military system. It has no sense of humor. It takes itself too seriously. It does not know how to laugh.
To the eight or ten Americans in the party the whole matter was a huge joke and we admired the spunk of the Bishop's wife, but the poor Japanese police officer was facing what he thought was an international problem.
Need it be said that the whole matter was finally settled to the entire satisfaction; not of the Japanese officer, but to the entire satisfaction of the Bishop's wife.
* * * * * *
A friend of mine who happens to be in business in the Orient got so tried of being interviewed, trailed, and made to answer innumerable questions about his mother, grandmother, etc., that one day on landing in Yokohama, in a spirit of fun, he answered the officer's questions in this manner:
"How old are you?"
"Thirty-six."
"Have you a family?"
"Yes."
"How many children?"
"Three."
"How old are they?"
"One is thirty-eight, one forty, and one forty-five."
"What is your occupation?"
"Commander-in-Chief of the Greenland Navy."
"What are you doing in Japan?"
"Getting a cargo of ice to take back to Greenland."
After satisfying his appetite for information, the Japanese police officer departed to make his reports, while the young American went to his hotel with a grin all over his face.
While he was eating his dinner that evening suddenly the Japanese officer appeared in the dining room with a big smile on his face and walkedover to where the American sat with a group of friends.
As he approached the American's table he said with a grin, "You American! I know! You American!"
"How did you guess it, my friend?"
"You make me one tam fool!" he said holding out the report.
* * * * * *
Some of the most laughable things that one sees in the Orient are the Japanese signs translated into English by some Japanese merchant who has picked up a dash of English here and there.
One such sign which caused a lot of amusement was that of a tailor who was trying to cater to American Tourist trade. He had, evidently, also had some contact with the spiritual phraseology of the missionaries. He had painted on a big sign:
"BUY OUR PANCE!THEY FIT YOU BETTER ANDTHEY WARM YOUR LEGS LIKE THELOVE OF GOD!"
Perhaps the most exhilaratingly humorous thing that the Japanese have perpetrated on the Koreans was a list of advices printed and posted all over Korea by the Police Department as to the regulation of Fords:
RULES!1. At the rise of hand of policeman, stop rapidly. Do not pass him by or otherwise disrespect him.2. When a passenger of the foot hove in sight, tootle the horn trumpet to him melodiously at first. If he still obstacles your passage, tootle him with vigor and express by word of the mouth the warning, "hi, hi."3. Beware of the wandering horse that he shall not take fright as you pass him. Do not explode the exhaust box at him. Go soothingly by, or stop by the roadside till he gently pass away.4. Give big space to the festive dog that make sport in the roadway. Avoid entanglement of dog with your wheel spokes.5. Go soothingly on the grease-mud, as there lurk the skid-demon. Press the brake of the foot as you roll around the corners to save the collapse and tie-up.6. Number of people you put in the Ford: You put two in the front house and three in the back house.
RULES!
1. At the rise of hand of policeman, stop rapidly. Do not pass him by or otherwise disrespect him.
2. When a passenger of the foot hove in sight, tootle the horn trumpet to him melodiously at first. If he still obstacles your passage, tootle him with vigor and express by word of the mouth the warning, "hi, hi."
3. Beware of the wandering horse that he shall not take fright as you pass him. Do not explode the exhaust box at him. Go soothingly by, or stop by the roadside till he gently pass away.
4. Give big space to the festive dog that make sport in the roadway. Avoid entanglement of dog with your wheel spokes.
5. Go soothingly on the grease-mud, as there lurk the skid-demon. Press the brake of the foot as you roll around the corners to save the collapse and tie-up.
6. Number of people you put in the Ford: You put two in the front house and three in the back house.
There were other rules but this list will be sufficient as a Flash-light of Fun to give some idea of the ridiculous way in which the average Japanese twists the ideas and phraseology of English in the translations.
I saw one great sign which brought a smile. It was up on the island of Hokkaido. It had printed in large English letters:
"GET YOUR MOTHER'S MILK HERE!"
Below that sentence there was a picture of a cow which looked as much like a combination ofan Elephant and a Camel as anything I know. The artist must have been a wonder. Attached to each of the cow's udders were long lines of hose that ran for about ten feet across a big bill-board. At the end of each line of hose was a nipple, like our American baby-nipples. At the end of each nipple there was a man-sized baby pulling away at the nipple. It was one of the funniest advertising signs I ever saw. I watched several Americans look up at it and every one of them laughed aloud. And the funny thing about it was that it was intended to be a serious advertising sign.
* * * * * *
At a banquet given in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo one of the most side-splitting incidents happened unintentionally that ever happened at any banquet anywhere.
One of the sons of a great Japanese business man was speaking. The banquet was in honor of a well-known College President from America who had come to take up work in the Orient. This banquet was to welcome him officially to Japan.
One of the speakers, sitting beside Mr. Uchida, the Foreign Minister, had been a student in America where this man was formerly the college president and he was trying to make the crowd see how happy he was to welcome the presidentto Japan. He did it in the following language as nearly as I can remember it:
"I feel like a cartoon I see in your peculiar paper—what you call him—Puck?Judge? No—he bin in that peculiar paper,Life? That was he.
"This picture; he shows two dogs talking to each other.
"One dog he a great, what you call him—Coolie? Pug? Yes, he was a Scottish Coolie. The other was a little wee dog; a Pugnacious Dog, I think you call him.
"The little dog he have his tail all done up in the bandages.
"The big dog say, 'Little dog, for why you have your tail all bandaged up like that? You have an accident?'
"'No,' say the little dog, 'but my master, he just come home from France, and I am so glad to see him I bin wagging my tail all day long until it get broke and I have to have him wrapped up like this.'"
Then the speaker turned dramatically—with the deepest sense of seriousness; without a trace of a smile on his face, without a glimmer of consciousness of the fact that the Americans at that banquet were biting their teeth to keep from bursting into laughter; and with a grand flourish, pointed to the American dignitary and said, "Ifeel just like that little dog. I so glad to see Dr. —— come to Japan that I have been wagging my tail all day long."
But he got no further. The American crowd; full-dressed, and full of dignity as it was; exploded. That speech was too much, even for the sake of international courtesy, to expect such a crowd to hold in. Fortunately most of the educated Japanese there saw the joke and joined in the laugh.
* * * * * *
We had a funny experience in a dining car on a Japanese train coming from northern Japan down to Tokyo one evening.
A well-dressed Japanese in a rich Kimono sat drinking heavily at a table a few feet from us.
Suddenly he looked up and yelled "Silence!" looking directly at us.
It was so sudden and so funny that I laughed. This made the Japanese gentleman angry.
Then he let forth a more extended English sentence. Later we figured that it was the only sentence in English that he knew, and that he had learned that sentence by sitting at the feet of some stern, English teacher who had occasion to reiterate that sentence frequently.
This drunken Japanese looked at me sternly for laughing and said, "Silence! All gentlemen must be silent!"
This was too much for my sense of humor and I laughed again.
"Silence! All gentlemen must be silent!" he yelled a third time.
"We must get away from him; or we'll get into trouble. I can't keep from laughing when he repeats that," I said to Dr. Goucher.
We all moved back to another table, but Dr. Goucher sat by himself at a little table. This moving, insulted the drunken Japanese and he came back to where Dr. Goucher sat and leered into his face yelling once again, "All gentlemen must be silent!"
At this one of the party jumped to the side of Dr. Goucher and took the Japanese by the shoulder and turned him around and said, "Go! Sit down, fool!"
The train was whirling through the night. There were mutterings and imprecations among the Japanese and we thought that they were directed toward us; but a missionary who could understand the language, said that the whole crowd of Japanese was severely reprimanding the drunken Japanese for insulting foreigners. They told him in Japanese phrases that he ought to be ashamed of insulting foreigners in his own country.
About five minutes after this he suddenly left his seat, came staggering down the aisle ofthe car with a plate full of big red apples and offered an apple to each one of us as a peace offering.
We got to calling him, in our party "Old Mr. 'All gentlemen must be silent!'" and he came to be a real character in our fun.
But one morning a month later as we were all boarding a train in Fusan, Korea, bound for Seoul, who should be sitting in the car but "Old Mr. 'All gentlemen must be silent.'"
This time he was in American clothes. We had a Japanese friend with us. We told this friend about the incident on the train in northern Japan and asked him who the man was.
"Why that is a member of the House of Lords and he is going up to Korea representing the Diet to make a report on the Korean outrages," we were told.
Another month passed and I was coming back from Seoul, Korea, to Tokio, Japan, when I suddenly ran into our old friend "All gentlemen must be silent!" This time he was drunk again, and sitting in a Japanese dining car with the same Kimono on that he had worn the first time we saw him. He saw me enter the car.
I tried to avoid him, but he was not to let this opportunity for international courtesy go by unnoticed and unimproved. So, much to my delight and surprise, he arose, and made a low bow.
I bowed back. He made another bow until his nose almost touched the car. I made a return bow. He made a third one. I followed suit. He made a fourth. I made a fourth, although I was beginning to feel dizzy and my insides were beginning to complain.
I wondered when the thing would stop. I thought of a hundred fat men I had seen on a Gymnasium floor trying to do the same thing and touch the floor with their hands. I knew that there was a limit to my endurance in a test of this kind. He bowed five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times, and I bowed back. I could see things whirling around me.
"Blame it, why doesn't he stop some time!" I said to myself.
I was desperate. Then suddenly I looked at him and he looked at me and he said, with great dignity, "All gentlemen must be silent!" and sat down, with his friends and his wines.
I don't know whether he realized how funny it was or not. I don't know whether he even knew what he was saying in his drunken condition, but I do know that when I got out of that car into the vestibule I had the laugh of my life. A Japanese woman came by, smiled at me and I am sure said to herself:
"Ah, these Americans they are all crazy!"
* * * * * *
The last Flash-light of Fun is a picture from the Philippines.
I have spoken in the chapter on "Flash-lights of Faith" of the trip to the Negrito tribe, but in that chapter I did not speak of the desperate adventure of the trip back down the jungle trail to civilization after the experience with the old man.
For the second time on that memorable day I dropped in my tracks with a sunstroke. My legs refused to move. My muscles were congested with waste matter and evidently my brain was also. When I returned to consciousness I saw lying beside me Mr. Huddleston, an old missionary who had been in the Philippines for many years. Across from, him was a naked Negrito who was acting as our guide.
I looked up in a tree above us and saw what I thought was a group of monkeys.
"Look at the monkeys!" I said to the missionary.
"There are no monkeys in that tree!" he said.
That made me angry. My mind was affected by the sun to such an extent that I had an insane desire to grab the Bolo of the Negrito guide out of his belt and run it through the missionary. I made a determined mental effort to do so, but my arm would not work. I strove as one strives in a dream when he is trying to run away from some imagined danger and his feet are tied down.If I could have gotten my hands on that bolo I would have run it through the missionary without a minute's hesitation.
But my mind was detracted from this thought by two large elephants which I suddenly saw running down the path on which we were lying. I yelled aloud!
"The elephants! They will trample us man! Look! There they come!" I cried pointing up the trail on which we were lying.
"Why you're plumb crazy man! You've missed too many boats! That sun's got you! There are no elephants on this trail!"
"But I know elephants when I see them!" I cried and tried to roll out of the trail but again found it impossible to make my brain and my muscles coordinate. It was a terrible moment to me.
"My God man! Are you crazy! I know elephants when I see them. They're right on us now! Help me out of here! I can't move!"
"I tell you there are no elephants and there are no monkeys in these islands. I've been here twenty years or more!"
"But I know elephants when I see them!"
But just at that moment a much greater danger confronted us, for I saw three tigers leap out of the jungle and start after the twoelephants; right down the trail toward us. Then I knew that we were as good as dead.
I yelled: "Tigers! Tigers! They are running after the elephants! They are on top of us!"
The fool of a missionary laughed aloud, as he lay on the trail and said, "Plumb crazy! Plumb crazy! Sun's got him! Sun's got him!"
"Sun's got who, fool? The elephants and tigers will kill us in about a minute!"
But just then something happened which upset my calculations and made me have a feeling that—after all—perhaps the old missionary was right—for suddenly those two elephants; being too closely pursued by the tigers; nonchalantly flew into the air like two great birds, and lighted in the tree over our heads where I thought the monkeys were. If those elephants hadn't started to fly; I should still be arguing with the missionary; but as it turned out; I shut my fool mouth and decided that the missionary was right and that I had "Missed too many boats."
"Self-determination!" That phrase has set the whole world on fire!
"Independence!" That word somehow has awakened the Oriental world; awakened that mass of humanity as it has never been awakened before.
Korea perhaps has thrilled to this awakening as no other section of the Orient or the Near and Far East. India's millions are restless; the Filipino is hungry for Independence although he is loyal to the United States; but Korea has the matter set in its heart like adamant. This determination will never be broken; Korea will never be conquered by Japan!
This dream of complete and full independence is buried in the souls of the children, as well as in the souls of the brave women, and of the old men of Korea.
"It is one of the most thrilling things I have ever seen in the Orient!" said a man on the Editorial staff ofMillard's Weekly. "It is the most significant outcome of the war; Korea's passionfor independence, and the Student Movement in China!"
I said to a business man of California who had traveled all over the Orient and who had been sent as part of the Commission that prepared the way for the abandonment of the Picture Bride custom, "What is the most significant thing you have seen in the Orient?"
"The determination of the Koreans for Self-determination!" was his quick reply.
"Will they get it?"
"It is inevitable in time!" he responded, and then he added: "Why the little rascals; the children, I mean; paint the Korean flags on their brown bellies, because the Japanese gendarmes will not allow them to display the Korean flag in public!" and he laughed aloud at the memory.
"Have you seen Korean kiddies with flags painted on their stomachs?"
"Dozens of them. They like to show them to Americans," he said.
A week later I was walking with a Korean missionary and asked him if what the business man from California had told me about the children was true and he said, "Wait until we find a group of them."
We waited for only a few minutes when we ran into a crowd coming home from school. Afriendly smile and a low-voiced "Mansei" got attention.
Then we pointed to our own stomachs.
In a flash they caught on to what we wanted and, looking around cautiously, each little rascal untied his robe and there, sure enough was the flag of his country painted on his stomach.
"That is one of the most thrilling sights I have seen in the Orient!" I said with tears in my eyes. "If the children of the land feel that way, Korea will never be conquered!"
"The American understands! The American understands!" one of the little bright-eyed boys said to the missionary in Korean.
* * * * * *
A missionary was teaching a class of Koreans about Heaven.
A little hand shot up.
The missionary nodded that the child could speak.
"Will there be any Japs in Heaven?"
This was a baffling question; for diplomatic destinies were at stake. But missionaries are usually honest, so she said, "Yes, if they are good Japs!"
"Then I don't want to go!" said the little eight-year-old Korean with emphasis.
Another teacher was telling a class in Geography to draw a map of the Orient.
One Korean child said, "Do we have to put in that little group of islands east of the coast of China?"
I met one Korean whom I had known in America. He was educated in the American universities. He was in every sense of the word a gentleman and an intellectual.
He told me that the older children of his family had taught the nine-months-old baby to raise its hands in the air above its head whenever the word "Mansei" was spoken.
I got an electrical shock of patriotism the day I saw that tiny child lift its little arms above its head when that sacred word was spoken. It was like a benediction of freedom!
"This posture of the child is more significant," said Mr. ——, "when you know that the most cruel method of torture that the Japanese use is that of stretching a man, woman or child up by the thumbs to the ceiling with his toes just touching the floor."
In that same posture of torture Koreans rise to their toes when they give their national cry of "Mansei" for all the world like an American student giving his college yell.
"It means life and death to give that cry as you know," said this intelligent Korean.
"Then what will your children do when theygrow a bit older and go out on the streets and yell this cry?" I asked this intelligent father.
"Be killed, no doubt, by some ignorant, ruthless Japanese gendarme!" he said with finality.
"Then you should not allow them to teach its tiny lips that word!" I said.
"I would rather my child were dead than to have it forget that cry!"
In this same family one Sunday afternoon a two-year-old child was sleeping on a mat. The father and mother were reading some American papers sent them by their old college friends in the United States.
Suddenly that little two-year-old sat straight up in its mat bed, lifted its arms in the air and shouted "Mansei! Mansei! Mansei!" three times and then dropped back to sleep as if nothing had happened.
"How did you feel?" I asked my Korean friend.
"It made me cry. I said to my wife 'As long as Korea has babies with that in their little souls before they are two years of age, Korea will never be assimilated by Japan!'"
The children of Korea look up at the ceiling when a Japanese teacher enters a room. They are compelled to have Japanese teachers; even in the mission schools. The children refuse to do anything for a Japanese teacher.
One day a Japanese teacher thought that he would break that mood by telling a funny story. He told it with skill.
But not a child laughed, although one of them said to her father that night, "It was hard not to laugh for it was a very funny story!"
"Who tells you to do these things; you students? Who teaches you to treat your Japanese teachers in that manner?" my Korean friend asked his six-year-old child.
"Nobody tells us; we just do it ourselves! All the children hate the Japanese!" he replied with the wisdom of a grown man.
All over Korea we saw Korean flags cut in walls, carved on stones, and against excavations where the sand was impressionable to little fingers and sticks. I took many photographs of these unconventional flags.
There is one instance where Korean children went on a strike just at Commencement time. It meant that they would not get their diplomas but that was just the reason they did it: to show their contempt for Japanese diplomas.
Japanese authorities begged them to return to school.
Finally on Commencement Day they decided to return.
Something had happened.
It was a day of rejoicing among the Japaneseso they invited a lot of Japanese officers to the Commencement exercises.
The diplomas were given, to each boy; the Japanese teachers bowing, and smiling in their peculiar way.
Then a thirteen-year-old Korean boy stepped to the front to make the address of thanks. He made a beautiful speech of thanks. The Japanese teachers were bowing with delight.
But the boy's speech was not finished. He paused toward the end, threw back his blouse, lifted his proud head and said, "I have only this one thing further to add."
He knew the seriousness of what he was about to do. He knew that it would possibly mean death to him and his relatives.
"We want but one thing of you Japanese. You have given us education, and you have given us these diplomas. The teachers have been good to us."
Then he reached in his blouse and pulled out a Korean flag. To have one in one's possession is a crime in Korea in the judgment of the Japanese.
Waving it above his little head he cried, "Give us back our country! May Korea live a thousand years! Mansei! Mansei! Mansei!"
At that signal every boy in that school jumped to his feet, whipped out a Korean flag and frantically waved it in the air, weeping and yelling inwild abandonment to the faith and courage of freedom in their hearts!
Then they tore their diplomas up before the horrified and angered Japanese teachers.
The result was a great student demonstration for freedom; which was broken up by a force of Japanese gendarmes with drawn swords; but not before the shooting of many boys and girls; and not before over four hundred girls and boys were thrown into prison; some of them never to emerge.
In the chapter on "Flash-lights of Faith" I told the story of the seventy-five-year-old Korean who unflinchingly faced the Japanese gendarmes and admitted that he knew the source from which the Independence Movement had come; and knew the signers of the Declaration personally; every one of them. This spirit burns in the heart of, not only the babies of Korea but also in the souls of the white haired stately patriarchs.
One old man who was dumb had his own way of expressing his patriotism when "Mansei" was yelled. He always lifted his arms above his head. He could not speak but he could yell with his arms!
This placed the Japanese authorities in the ridiculous position of arresting a dumb man for yelling "Mansei!"
They tortured him for months. He was toldthat he would be released if he would promise never to lift his hands above his head again.
He could not speak in answer to their demands. They waited.
Suddenly he caught their meaning. They were trying to frighten him from giving vent to his only method of showing his patriotism.
His eyes flashed fire. He leapt to his feet with a contemptuous look at his Japanese captors.
Then like flashing piston rods of steel his arms shot into the air above his head three times, shouting in their mute patriotism, "Mansei! Mansei! Mansei!"
Nor are the women void of this determination for freedom. It beats in their brave hearts. It is a great flame in their souls as well as in the hearts of the children and men of the peninsula.
"The soul's armor is never set well to heart unless a woman's hand has braced it, and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails!" says Robert McKenna in "The Adventure of Life."
If that is a true definition of the strength of honor and the desire for freedom then the armor of the Korean men is well set.
Sauci, a young Korean girl was under arrest. She was just a school girl and very beautiful; with dark brown eyes; skin the color of a walnut; and a form, bred of the grace of her much walkingrace. She had walked the innumerable trails of her native land from babyhood and the rhythmic swing of her supple body would have made any race, save that of her conquerors, reverent with admiration.
Sauci was too much for her Japanese captors.
The Japanese guard struck her across the mouth with a whip.
"That doesn't hurt me. That is the grace of God. I don't hate you for that blow!" said Sauci.
This angered the Jap and he struck her again. This stroke left a streak of blood across her face.
Sauci said again, "That doesn't hurt me. That is the grace of God. I do not hate you for striking me!"
The gendarme was furious. His anger was like that of a beast. He flew at her blindly, and struck, struck, struck her woman's body until he was exhausted.
A few days later when she was recovering from that brutal beating, a high official of the Japanese gendarme force came to see her.
"Sauci," said he to her, recognizing her for an intelligent Korean girl, "why do not the Koreans like us?"
She replied, "I had a dream last night here in the cell. That will tell you why. In my dream a visitor came to our home and stayed for dinner.Then instead of going home, the visitor stayed all night. Then the visitor stayed two or three days. Then two or three months. Then two or three years. We were surprised but were too polite to say anything.
"But finally the visitor got to telling us how to run our house."
"How?" asked the Japanese official, "Did the visitor tell you how to run your house?"
"The visitor," replied Sauci, "told us that he didn't like our wall paper. 'I think you had better get new paper!' he said. 'I do not like your clothes and your schools. Wear clothes like mine, and have schools like mine. I do not like your way of talking. Learn my language!'
"So finally we got tired of our visitor and said, 'Please go home! WE do not like you! We do not want you! Please go home!'"
"But what has that to do with us?" said the Japanese official.
"Why in a few days the visitor in my dream went home!" said Sauci simply. "And in a few years the Japanese will go back home also!" Such is the courageous spirit of the Korean women.
* * * * * *
One day an American friend of mine had gone to the Police Station with a young Korean girl who had been summoned to appear on what was called a "rearrest charge."
For the Japanese feel perfectly free to rearrest a person even after that person has been proven innocent of a charge. A Korean may be rearrested any time. He can never feel free.
This young, educated girl had been subjected to such indignities on her previous arrest as I would not be able to describe in this book; so she begged the woman friend to go with her.
As she entered the station a rough, ignorant Japanese officer snarled at her as she passed, "Hello! Are you here again? I thought you were still in prison!"
When he had gone from the room the Korean girl said to the American woman, "That man beat me for ten hours one day the last time I was in prison!"
"Why did he beat you?" asked the missionary.
"He was trying to compel me to give him the names of those girls who belonged to the 'Woman's League'."
"And you would not tell him their names?"
"I would rather have been beaten to death than give him their names!"
"Thank God for your courage!" said the missionary, for she had seen the girl's body when she had gotten out of prison; the burns of cigarette stumps all over her beautiful skin; the scars, the whip marks; the desecrations.
When I was told this story, amid the tears ofthe narrator, an American college woman, she concluded with fire in her soul: "I have never seen such courage on the part of women in all my life! Even mere girls and children have it. Most of those who are arrested come out of our American Missionary schools. There isn't a one of them who doesn't have in her soul the spirit of Joan of Arc. If France had one Joan of Arc, Korea has ten thousand!"
One young girl of whom I heard was kept in prison under constant torture for six months. And a cruel imprisonment it is. I visited this prison myself one winter day when I was in Korea. The thermometer was at zero; the snow covered the ground, and there wasn't a fire in a single room in that prison save where the Japanese guards were staying, and they were huddled around a roaring coal stove.
And this is the show prison of the whole Peninsula. The Japanese take visitors through it. But to an American even it is fit only for the darkness of the Middle Ages.
In its limited quarters I saw ten and fifteen young girls, sweet faced, cultured, educated school girls, huddled together in narrow rooms, without a single chair, so closely packed that they were seated on the floor like bees in a hive.
After six months of this awful life the girl of whom I speak was about to be released.
The guard questioned her. "Now what are you going to do?"
Her answer came, quick as a shot, although she knew that it would send her back to the hell from which she was about to be released.
"It is either liberty for Korea or we die!" she said.
And in three minutes, beaten, and dragged on the ground by the hair she was thrown into the cell from which she had been taken; to rot and die as far as the Japanese were concerned.
Another girl who had been kept in jail 135 days without even a charge having been preferred against her was released. Her old mother came to meet her and while in Seoul the mother attended an Independence Meeting for women. The whole crowd of women then went to the Police Station and shouted "Mansei"!
The mother was arrested and cruelly beaten in spite of her seventy-five years of age.
When they were through beating her they said, "Now will you refrain from yelling, 'Mansei!'"
"Never!" said this old woman.
Then they took a bar of iron and beat her over the legs until she dropped.
"Now will you refrain from yelling 'Mansei?'"
The old woman was weak, but in a low, painful whisper said, "The next time the women come to yell, if I am able to walk I will be with them!"
Another old woman was brought to prison for yelling "Mansei!" When they asked her why she yelled "Mansei" she answered in a sentence that sums up the entire spirit that is in the woman-heart of Korea.
"I have only one word in my head and that is 'Mansei!'"
I personally, one day in Korea, saw the Japanese gendarmes come for a Korean girl. She was one of the most popular girls in the American Methodist Missionary School.
It was the common custom for Japanese officials to come and take Korean girls out of these schools, without warning, without warrants, without words, and carry them off to prison.
Often the girl was not even permitted to say good-by to her American teachers or to write a word to her parents.
"They are not even permitted to supply themselves with toilet articles," said the matron to me that day.
On this day, six big, brutal, ugly faced, animal-like Japanese officers came for this beautiful girl.
The missionary women wept as the girl was dragged away. The girl waved good-by.
It was a sight never to be forgotten; one of those Flash-lights of Freedom, which burned its way into my soul with the hot acid of indignation. This injustice and indecency in the treatmentof a pure girl made my blood run hot in my veins.
The look on her face I shall never forget. It was such a look as the martyrs of old must have had when they died for their faith.
"Good-by! Good-by! Give my love to Mary and Elizabeth!" she cried to the missionary woman standing by, helpless to assist her. These two names were children of the missionary home; children whom this Korean girl had learned to love as she lived in this American home.
"And the awful thing about it all, is," said the missionary to me as they took the girl away, "that, as pure as that girl is, as pure as a flower, she will be taken to a prison fifty miles from Seoul, kept there under torture for six months, and she will not be allowed to see her friends. They will not even allow us to visit her. She may be undressed and spat upon by men who are lower than animals. She may suffer even worse than that——"
Then the American missionary woman fainted.
That flash-light may be duplicated a hundred times in Korea.
"The woman of Korea suffers as much as the man. But thank God they do not flinch!" said an American missionary.
The Japanese Gendarmes have forbidden the singing of several of the great church hymns inmission churches because they insist that these are hymns of Freedom; that they foment what the Japanese call "Dangerous Ideas." Japanese spies have reported certain Seoul Methodist churches for singing hymns that, to their way of thinking, were directed against the Japanese Government. This particular illustration of the peculiar workings of the Japanese mind might have been included in the chapter on Flash-lights of Fun; were it not for the fact that the Japanese officers themselves call these old church hymns "Hymns of Freedom."
The Japanese are just as much afraid of these "Dangerous Thoughts" in Japan as they are in Korea. A good illustration of this fear is the fact that a certain picture corporation of America called "The Liberty Film Company" sent several films to Japan. The Government would not allow these pictures to be shown until that word "Liberty" was cut from the film.
Certain Japanese spies reported a Mission church in Seoul for singing "Rock of Ages."
"But why may we not sing 'Rock of Ages'?" asked the American preacher in charge.
"Because it starts off with 'Mansei!'" replied the officer.
He interpreted the thought of "Rock of Ages" to be a direct imputation that the Japanese Government was not able to take care of the Koreansand that they were flying to some other protecting power.
"It would be funny if it were not so serious!" said a missionary to me one day in Seoul.
Later they stopped the churches from singing "Nearer My God to Thee," because there seemed to be an implication in that, that those who sang that hymn, were swearing allegiance to a higher power than that of Japan.
"Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous!" I said in disgust.
"Yes, ridiculous, but serious," replied the missionary, "when you have to live with it year in and year out."
"Crown Him Lord of All," insisted the Japanese spies, when they seriously reported a certain church for singing that old hymn was "Dangerous Thought." It seemed to this ignorant spy that "Crowning Him" was putting some other power before that of the Japanese Government.
"All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name" has been put under the ban and when a certain missionary woman was asked to sing at the Korean Y.M.C.A. and announced that she was going to sing "Oh, Rest in the Lord" she was advised not to sing it because it was considered by the gendarmes to be "Dangerous Thought" and to suggest "Liberty," "Freedom" and such dangerous words and ideas.
When one Protestant preacher prayed about "Casting Out Devils" he was reported by Japanese spies, who insisted that he was talking about Japanese in Korea and meant that these should be cast out of the land.
"'It is to laugh!' as the French say!" I responded to this story.
"No! It is to weep!" said the American missionary.
When Dr. Frank W. Schoefield spoke against Prostitution the Japanese papers declared that he had made a virulent attack on the Government.
One Korean preacher who preached on a theme from Luke 4:18, which reads "Setting the captives free," was arrested and kept in jail for four days.
"It is very foolish to yell 'Mansei' when you know you will be killed," I said to a Korean preacher. I wanted to see how he would take that suggestion.
"We Koreans would rather be under the ground than on top of it if we do not get our liberty!" he said with a thrill in his quiet voice.
One day a Korean preacher was arrested for preaching on the theme, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you," because that was, without doubt, disloyal to Japan and meant rebellion.
Another day a speaker in the Y.M.C.A. said,"Arise and let us build for the new age!" He was asked to report to Police Headquarters just what he meant by that kind of "Dangerous" talk about Freedom.
Three great Flash-lights of Failure stand out in the Far East and the Oriental world to-day; one being the failure of a race to survive, another being the failure of the world to understand that Shantung is the Holy Land and not the appendix of China; this sacred shrine of the Chinese which has so carelessly and listlessly been given over to Japan; and the third being Japan's failure to understand that methods of barbarism from the Dark Ages will not work in a modern civilization.
"Why are they making all this fuss over Shantung?" an acquaintance of mine said to me just before I left America. "Isn't it just a sort of an appendix of China, after all? If I were the Chinese, I'd forget Shantung and go on to centralize and develop what I had."
That was glibly said, but the fact which the statement leaves out of reckoning is that Shantung is the very heart and soul of China instead of being the appendix.
The average American has so often thought ofChina just as China; a great, big, indefinite, far-off nation of four hundred million people, always stated in round numbers, that Shantung doesn't mean much to us. Yes, but it means much to China.
It means about the same as if some nation should come along and take New England from us; New England, the seat of all our most sacred history, the beginning of our national life, the oldest of our traditions, the burial-place of our early founders, the seat of our religious genesis. I don't believe that many folks in New England would desire to be called an appendix of the United States.
So one of the things that I was determined to do when I went to China was to go from one end of Shantung to the other, talking with coolies, officials, old men and young men, students, and those who can neither read nor write; missionaries and soldiers; natives and foreigners; to see just what importance Shantung is to China as a whole.
The first thing I discovered was that it has about forty million people living within the limits of the peninsula, close to half the population of the United States. Does that sound as if it might be China's appendix? You wouldn't think so if you saw the cities, roads and fields of this great stretch of land literally swarming with humanbeings, and every last one of them, as busy as ants.
I rode one whole day across the peninsula. I happened to be traveling with a man from Kansas. He was a man interested in farming and wheat-growing. For hundreds of miles we had been passing through land that was absolutely level and every inch of it cultivated. I had been saying to myself over and over again, "Why, it's exactly like our Middle West Country."
Then much to my astonishment this Kansas man turned to me, and said, "Did it ever occur to you that these fields of Shantung look just like Kansas?"
"Yes, it has just occurred to me this minute," I responded.
Then the wife of the Kansas man said, "I have been shutting my eyes and trying to imagine that I was in Kansas, it's so much like home."
"And say, man, but a tractor on those fields would work wonders," added a portion of William Allen White's reading constituency.
And that is exactly how Shantung strikes an American when he has ridden all day through its great stretches of level fields. He can easily imagine himself riding through Kansas for a day.
My first visit to Shantung was at Tsingtao, the headquarters of the German concession and now of the Japanese concession. I spent a day there,and took photographs of the wharves and town. On the wharves were still standing hundreds of boxes marked with German names and the inevitable phrase "Made in Germany." Those boxes were mute reminders of the evacuation of one nation from a foreign soil. But standing side by side with these boxes were also other hundreds, already being shot into Shantung in a steady stream; and these boxes have a new trademark printed in every case in English and Japanese, "Made in Japan."
I spent several days in Tsinanfu and Tientsin, two great inland cities, and more than a week in cruising about through Shantung's little towns, its villages and its sacred spots.
I heard of its mines and of its physical wealth. But the world already knows of that. The world already knows that this physical wealth of mines and raw material was what made it look good to Germany and Japan. But the thing that impressed me was its spiritual wealth.
The thing that makes Shantung attractive to the Japanese, of course, is not the spiritual wealth, as the world well knows. Perhaps the Japanese have never considered the latter any more than the Germans did; but the one thing that makes it most sacred to the Chinese, who are, after all, a race of idealists, is its treasuries of spiritual memories and shrines.
In the first place, many Chinese will tell you that it is the "cradle of the Chinese race." I am not sure that histories will confirm this statement. And I am also not sure that that makes any difference as long as the idea is buried in the heart of the Chinese people. A tradition often means as much to a race as a fact. And the tradition certainly is well established that Shantung is the birthplace of all Chinese history. So that is one of the deeply rooted spiritual facts that makes Shantung sacred to the Chinese.
The second spiritual gold mine is that one of its cities, Chufu, is the birthplace and the last resting-place of the sage Confucius. And China is literally impregnated with Confusian philosophy and Confucian sayings.
I took a trip to this shrine in order to catch some of the spiritual atmosphere of the Shantung loss. The trip made it necessary to tramp about fifteen miles coming and going through as dusty a desert as I ever saw, but that was a trifle compared with the thrill that I had as I stood at last before the little mound about as high as a California bungalow; the mound that held the dust of this great Chinese sage. During the war I stood before the grave of Napoleon in France. Before I went to France I visited Grant's tomb. I have also stood many times beside a little mound in West Virginia, the resting-place of my mother,and I think that I know something of the sacredness of such experiences to a human heart, but somehow the thrill that came to me on that January morning, warm with sunlight, spicy with winter cold, produced a feeling too deep for mere printed words to convey.
"If we feel as we do standing here on this sacred spot, think of how the Chinese feel toward their own sage!" said an old missionary of the party.
"Yes," added another, "and remember that the Chinese revere their ancestors and their sages and their shrines more than we ever dream of doing. Any grave is a sacred spot to them, so much so that railroads have to run their trunk lines for miles in a detour to avoid graves. These Chinese are idealists of the first water. They live in the past, and they dream of the future."
"When you get these facts into your American heads," added a third member of the party, not without some bitterness, "then you will begin to know that the Chinese do not estimate the loss of Shantung in terms of mineral wealth."
At Chufu, the resting-place of Confucius, there is also the spot of his birth, and this too is most sacred to the Chinese nation. We visited both places. I think that I never before quite realized just what the loss of Shantung meant to these Chinese until that day, unless it was the next day,when we climbed the sacred mountain Taishan, which is also in Shantung.
"It is the oldest worshiping-place in the world," said the historian of the party. "There is no other spot on earth where continuous worship has gone on so long. Here for more than twenty centuries before Christ was born men and women were worshiping. Emperors from the oldest history of China down to the present time have all visited this mountain to worship. Confucius himself climbed the more than six thousand steps to worship here."
"Yes," said another missionary historian, "and this mountain is referred to twelve separate times in the Chinese classics, and great pilgrimages were made here as long ago as two centuries before Christ."
That day we climbed the mountain up more than six thousand stone steps, which are in perfect condition and which were engineered thousands of years ago by early worshipers.
The only climb with which I can compare that of Mt. Taishan is that of Mt. Tamalpais overlooking San Francisco. The climb is about equal to that. The mountain itself is about a mile in height, and the climb is a hard one to those who are unaccustomed to mountain-climbing, and yet thousands upon thousands climb it every year after pilgrimages from all over China.
We climbed to the top of Taishan, and saw the "No-Character Stone" erected by Emperor Chin, he who tried to drive learning out of China hundreds of years ago. We saw the spot on which Confucius stood, and glimpsed the Pacific Ocean, ninety miles away, on a clear day. It was a hard climb; but, when one stood on the top of this, the most sacred mountain of all China, he began to understand the spiritual loss that is China's when her worshiping-place is in the hands of aliens.
"And don't forget that Mencius, the first disciple of Confucius, was born and died in Shantung, too, when you are taking census of the spiritual values of Shantung to the Chinese," was a word of caution from the old missionary who was checking up on my facts for me. He had been laboring in China for a quarter of a century.
"And don't forget that the Boxer uprising originated in Shantung, and don't forget that it is called, and has been for centuries, 'the Sacred Province' by the Chinese. It is their 'Holy Land.' And don't forget that, from Shantung, coolies went to South Africa in the early part of this century and that the Chinese from Shantung were the first to get in touch with the western world. And don't forget that nine-tenths of the coolies who went to help in the war in France were from Shantung!" he added with emphasis. This was a thing that I well knew, for I had, onlya few weeks before this, seen two thousand coolies unloaded from theEmpress of Asiaat Tsingtao.
No, Shantung is not an appendix of China, as many Americans suppose; but it is the very heart and soul of China. It is China's "Holy Land." It is the "Cradle of China." It is the "Sacred Province of China." It is the shrine of her greatest sage. It is the home of "the oldest worshiping-place on earth." It is because of its spiritual values that China is unhappy about the loss of Shantung, and not because of its wealth of material things.
The failure of the world to understand what Shantung means to China and the failure of Japan to understand that they cannot for many years stand out against the indignation of the entire world in continuing to keep Shantung is one of the great spiritual failures of the Far East in our century.
The second great failure is the tragic failure of an entire race of people; that of the Ainu Indians of Japan.
It is a pathetic thing to see a human race dying out; coming to "The End of the Trail." But I was determined to see them, in spite of the fact that people told me I would have to travel from one end of Japan to the other; and then cross four hours of sea before I got to Hokkaido, the mostnorthern island of Japan, where lived the tattered remnants of this once noble race.
The name of this dying race is pronounced as if it were spelled I-new with a long I.
These are the people who inhabited Japan before the present Japanese entered the land from Korea and drove them, inch by inch, back and north and west across Japan. It was a stubborn fight, and it has lasted many centuries; but to-day they have been driven up on the island of Hokkaido, that northern frontier of Japan where the overflow of Japan is pouring at the rate of four thousand a year, making two million to date and only about fifty thousand of them Ainus.
"Are they like our American Indians in looks, since their history is so much like them?" I asked my missionary friend.
"Wait until you see them, and decide for yourself. I know very little about American Indians."
So one morning at three o'clock, after traveling for two days and nights from one end of Japan to the other, and then crossing a strait between the Japan Sea and the Pacific Ocean to the island, we climbed from our train, and landed in a little country railroad station.
It was blowing a blizzard, and the snow crashed into our faces with stinging, whip-like snaps.
I was appointed stoker for the small stove inthe station while the rest of the party tried to sleep on the benches arranged in a circle, huddled as close as they could get to the stove.
We were the first party of foreigners of this size that had ever honored the village with a visit. And in addition to that we had come at an unearthly hour.
Who but a group of insane foreigners would drop into a town at three o'clock in the morning with a blizzard blowing? Either we were insane, or we had some sinister motives. Perhaps we were making maps of the seacoast.
And before daylight half of the town was peeking in through the windows at us. Then the policemen came. They were Japanese policemen, and did not take any chances on us. Even after our interpreter had told them that we were a group of scientists who had come to visit the Ainus they still followed us around most of the morning, keeping polite track of our movements.
About five o'clock that morning, as I was trying to catch a cat-nap, the newsboys of the village came to get the morning papers which had come in on the train on which we had arrived. They unbundled the papers in the cold station; their breath forming clouds of vapor; laughing and joking as they unrolled, folded and counted the papers; and arranged their routes for morning delivery.
It took me back to boyhood days down in West Virginia. I did the same thing as these Japanese boys were doing. I, too, arose before daylight, climbed out of bed, and went whistling through the dark streets to the station where the early morning trains dumped off the papers from the city. I, too, along with several other American boys of a winter morning, breathed clouds of vapor into the air, stamped my feet to keep them warm, and whipped my hands against my sides. I, too, unwrapped the big bundles of papers, and did it in the same way in which these Japanese boys did, by smashing the tightly bound wrappers on the floor until they burst. I, too, counted, folded, put in inserts, arranged my paper-route and darted out into the frosty air with the snow crunching under my feet. How universal some things are. The only difference was that these boys were dressed in a sort of buccaneer uniform. They had on high leather boots, and belts around their coats that made them look as if they had stepped out of a Richard Harding Davis novel. But otherwise they went through the same processes as an American boy in a small town.
When the vanguard of villagers had come to inspect us, they at first tried to talk Russian to us. They had never seen any other kind of foreigners.They had never seen Americans in this far-off island.
When daylight came, we started out on a long tramp to the Ainu villages. They were a mile or two away on the ocean. These people always build near the sea if they can. Fishing is one of their main sources of food.
We spent the day in their huts. They live like animals. A big, square hut covered with rice straw and thatch, with a fence of the same kind of straw running around the house, forms the residence. The only fire is in the middle of the only room, and this consists of a pile of wood burning on a flat stone or piece of metal in the center. There is no chimney in the roof, and not even an opening such as the American Indians had in the tops of their tepees. I do not know how they live. The smoke finds its way gradually through cracks in the walls and roofs. One can hardly find a single Ainu whose eyes are not ruined. The smoke has done this damage.
The only opening in their houses besides the door is one north window, and it is never closed. In fact, there is no window. It is only an opening.
"Why is that? I'd think they would freeze on a day like this," I said to the guide.
"They keep it that way all winter, and it gets a good deal below zero here," he said.
"But why do they do it?" old Shylock demanded.
"It is part of their religion. They believe that the god comes in that window. They want it open, so that he can come in whenever he wishes. It offends them greatly when you stick your head through that window."
Pat tried it just to see what would happen, just like a man who looks into the barrel of a gun, or a man who takes a watch apart, or wants to hit a "dud" with a hammer just to see whether it is a dud. The result was bad. There was a sudden series of outlandish yells from the household. I think that every man, woman and child, including the dogs, of which there were many, started at once. I wonder now how Pat escaped alive, and only under the assumption that "the good die young" can I explain his escape.
I wanted some arrows to take to America as souvenirs; and, when an old Indian pulled out a lot of metal arrows on long bows with which he had killed more than a hundred bears, I was not satisfied. They were not the kind of arrows I wanted.
"What kind are you looking for?" I was asked.
"Flint arrow-heads," I responded.
"Why, man, these Indians have known the use of metals for five hundred years. The stoneage with them is half a thousand years in the past."
"Have they a history?" I wanted to know.
My interpreter, who has much knowledge of these things, having worked among them for years, said, "All of the Japanese mythology is centered about the battles that took place when these Indians were driven out of Japan proper step by step."
I was surprised to find that they were white people compared with the Japanese who were their conquerors. There are other marked differences. The Ainus are broad between the eyes instead of narrow as are the Japanese. They are rather square-headed like Americans as compared with the oval of the Japanese face. They do not have markedly slant eyes, and they are white-skinned. They might feel at home in any place in America. I have seen many old men at home who look like them, old men with beards. This came as a distinct surprise to me.
At each house, just in front of the ever-open window of which I have spoken, there is a little crude shrine. It is more like a small fence than anything that I know, a most crude affair made of broken bamboo poles. Flowers and vines are planted here to beautify this shrine, and every pole has a bear-skull on it. The more bear-skullsyou have, the safer you are and the more religious you have become.
Pat was sacrilegious enough to steal a skull in order to get the teeth, which he wanted as souvenirs. I was chagrined and shocked at Pat's lack of religious propriety. However, I was enticed into accepting one of the teeth after Pat had knocked them out and stolen them.